Based on his widely read columns for The New Yorker, Ian Frazier’s uproarious first novel, The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days,
centers on a profoundly memorable character, sprung from an
impressively fertile imagination. Structured as a daybook of sorts, the
book follows the Cursing Mommy—beleaguered wife of Larry and mother of
two boys, twelve and eight—as she tries (more or less) valiantly to
offer tips on how to do various tasks around the home, only to end up
on the ground, cursing, surrounded by broken glass. Her voice is
somewhere between Phyllis Diller’s and Sylvia Plath’s: a hilariously
desperate housewife with a taste for swearing and large glasses of red
wine, who speaks to the frustrations of everyday life.